• Husqvarna Motorcycles Made In Sweden - About 1988 and older

  • Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

1976 "Factory" Husqvarna/Champion Flat Trackers

Calkins

Calkins

Husqvarna
AA Class
This is quoted from Gunnar Lindstrom's wonderful book, Husqvarna Success;

Page 135, "U.S. Dirt Track Bikes"

In the U.S. there was another attempt to enter a new market. In late 1975, twenty-five Dirt Trackers were commissioned to Trackside Engineering using Husqvarna 250 and 360 engines as well as locally produced special Champion frames sold through Husqvarna dealers. Several showed up the annual Daytona Dirt Track Race in March of 1976 and were quite successful, but Husqvarna did not repeat the program the following year.
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Has anyone ever seen these race bikes? Does anyone have any photos? I have been kicking around the idea of building a replica, to race in a local vintage flat track series, for a few years now.
 
The frame to the above 4-sp posting is a Champion frame made in 1975, and not period to the engine. I built one & know of only one other here in San Diego that are correct Champion (stamped) frames for the GP/CR Husky mills for '75 thru '77. I remember the number 23 bike being for sale possibly 6 to 7 yrs ago, being offered through Big D Cycles in Texas. My Champion build / Husky 360 shorttracker took approx. 1 yr (part time) and was a fun project to do. I did quite a bit of research & if I can help you in anyway, let me know.
 

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Clyde, I am glad you made it to this forum, and posted here. I seen photos floating around on the Face Page while you were building that bike. What a beautiful short tracker you have!

At this point, I have two thought on building a Husky short tracker. First, would be a stock swingarm framed brakeless 250. Second, would be an '83 250 white bike, as that is the year I was born. I had a Boss Yam 360 project a few years ago. I like the Boss frame, and the looks of the 'glass. I would probably get a "cheap" Boss frame, and have an '83 WR250 engine mounted in it.

I just bought a street titled '72 frame, so I have that to build up into a desert sled clone now. It was suppose to have a WR 450 engine in it. Not sure what I am going to build yet. Maybe a Desert Master clone for the gravel roads.
 
Clyde Williams said:
The frame to the above 4-sp posting is a Champion frame made in 1975, and not period to the engine. I built one & know of only one other here in San Diego that are correct Champion (stamped) frames for the GP/CR Husky mills for '75 thru '77. I remember the number 23 bike being for sale possibly 6 to 7 yrs ago, being offered through Big D Cycles in Texas. My Champion build / Husky 360 shorttracker took approx. 1 yr (part time) and was a fun project to do. I did quite a bit of research & if I can help you in anyway, let me know.
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Hey Clyde. Cool bike. :)

Scott T.
 
This is a good post with info we haven't talked about. Shorttracker.

The older Husqvarna dealer in Stratford,ct raced a 70's era 390 auto. I'm not sure if he's still around. I think he raced Daytona. There was a lot of old timers still racing Daytona.

We lost so many motor sports in the northeast, figure 8 and oval track stock car racing on saturdaynites. I read that Lyme rock road race track in northwest ct was suppose to start up motorcycle racing again.
 
wrx said:
figure 8 racing is a good way to thin the herd of morons who do it !
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It's the danger, the thrill the rush racing a figure 8 you have to be crazy to put your life on the edge. Heck we do it for free everytime we're on a streetbike on the interstate, right?
 
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